Sunday, July 29, 2012

The rain/storm from this morning ended at approximately 12:30pm. A swipe from our truck returned a reading 37x greater than background levels. A swipe taken 3 hours earlier returned a reading of 27x greater than background radiation. Our live outdoor airborne radiation monitor recorded an approximately 50% increase in background radiation. (see below)

A quick look at chart indicates that weather moved into the area around 5am with an initial peak in radioactivity that may represent local washout. From 6am to 12pm airborne radioactivity increased as the leading edge of the jetstream neared Saint Louis.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A Saint Louis TV news station, KMOV channel 4, is reporting that the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) and the US Army Core of Engineers have detected UNKNOWN radioactive materials in Saint Louis storm water runoff and sewer system.

" about 2600 disintegrations per minute were detected, but that reading
was not high enough to trigger more investigation. Typically, Cotner
says that a reading of at least 6000 disintegrations per minute would
lead to more sampling.

The above quote draws significant concern from the POTRBLOG team; for the following reasons:

1. It is not possible to calculate disintegrations per minute for an UNKNOWN material.
2. The report massively downplays the risk, and the need for further testing, based on calculation that are not possible given that they state they don't know what the radioactive material really is.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

A strong Solar X-class flare on 7/6/12 may result in a large Earthly proton bombardment. Under the right conditions, these protons could impact airborne Fukushima fallout and produce a veritable witch's brew of radioactive iodines and other spallation products.

Typically when these events happen, the effects are first reported in the Nordic countries as radioiodine detections of indeterminate origins. We suspect that the recent upswing in Fukushima fallout may result in unusual phenomena tied to this X -class flare. Please watch for and share any reports of any unusual activity.

For more information on solar proton spallations see these previous blog posts

Thursday, July 5, 2012

We have now added a live outdoor radiation monitoring capable to the POTRBLOG website. It is still in an experimental phase and the presented data should be taken with that in mind.
The live video stream for the monitor and real time wind maps are available on the POTRBLOG site at the following link

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Prairie Island Minnesota Nuclear Plant had to shutdown emergency diesel generators because the outside air temperature was just too dang hot.

So what exactly is too dang hot? According to today's NRC event report Prairie Island Nuclear has to shut down its D1 and D2 generators when the outside air temperature get above 97 degrees F.

So on the hottest days of the year when the electrical grid is at its most strained and the chances of having a Station Blackout (SBO) are highest, the emergency backup generators which help keep the nuclear core from going Fukushima during a SBO have to be shutdown? That just sounds stupid doesn't it?

Of course now that Prairie Island Nuclear is aware of the problem surely they will get right on the ball and have the problem fixed before next summer? Sadly that is unlikely given that they reported the EXACT same problems on June 8th of 2011.

Who knows? they may have been shutting down these emergency diesel generators during the highest Station Black Out risk periods for many summers. We only checked back one year; see these NRC event reports.

So why don't the nuclear plants fix these issues, and why does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not address the issue? Simple, the insurance company does not make them.

The fact is that no private insurance company would underwrite today's sorry state of nuclear affairs; but that is not a problem for the Nuclear plants because you and I are forced to be their insurance providers. And, its not a problem for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because they'll get their paychecks no matter how crappy of a risk mitigation job they perform, after all they have direct access to our wallet too.